City villa, 160 sqm with basement looking for fine-tuning helper

Hello everyone,

since we discovered this great forum quite late, I hope you might still be able to give us some input this week. Here are our key details:

Development plan/restrictions --> no development plan as it is an old property, according to Paragraph 34
Size of the property -> 579 sqm
Slope -> no
Floor area ratio -> none
Floor space index -> none
Building window, building line and boundary -> house is located almost on the northern building boundary
Number of parking spaces -> carport + double garage
Number of floors -> 3 including basement
Roof shape -> hipped roof
Style -> modern
Orientation -> entrance east, garden northwest

Requirements of the builders
Number of people, age -> currently 30 and 28, children at some point :)

Overnight guests per year -> 10

Open or closed architecture -> open
Conservative or modern construction -> modern
Open kitchen, kitchen island -> open kitchen with kitchen island
Fireplace -> panoramic fireplace

House design
Who designed it -> architect

Other:
Prefab house from Weberhaus with KFW40 Plus.
Ceilings on ground floor raised to 2.67 m instead of 2.5 m
We left the chimney maintenance shaft on the ground floor as it did not support the floor plan in the basement.
Besides the large living/dining area, our personal highlights are the window seat and the fireplace. Do you think the empty space in between is wasted?

So, before the first question comes up, we couldn't orient the terrace to the south because the building boundary restricted us and, what’s even more important -> to the south we would face the neighbor on a slope+terrace, while to the north there is a beautiful orchard meadow with several hundred meters of view. To the west we also have a neighbor with two full floors, but since we have about 10 meters of garden, we hope that this is enough for us.

What personally makes me a bit uneasy is the empty space between the kitchen/dining area and the living room. Originally, we had placed the fireplace in the middle there, but my wife did not want to divide the room like that after all.

What also bothered us a bit was the small "niche" in the bedroom, so I have adjusted our new proposal for the architect under "OG_NEU."

That would be roughly it. As I said, unfortunately, we came across this very late and have already had a few rounds with the architects. I thought maybe you can manage to give us some feedback this week.

Best regards and thanks!

What I notice is that the dressing room can accommodate a window. The wardrobes that are drawn in don’t work anyway. I think it would also improve the exterior view.

I would simply continue the wall in the bedroom on the upper floor. This creates a deeper niche on the children’s room side that can be filled with a mini walk-in closet, Wall-Closet, in the American style.

I would urgently plan the kitchen or have it planned. I don’t find it quite coherent.

And, really completely without supports in the living room or visible beams? I would also ask again.

And then I would probably place the living room on the upper left of the ground floor (so South/West), then the dining room on the upper right and the kitchen part to the right on the lower side.

Pantry (why actually? maybe better a small storage room on the ground floor for vacuum cleaner etc.) and guest WC then on the right side of the entrance.

Then the large room could get a bit more South/West light.

I would leave everything as planned by the architect, except for an additional window in the dressing room. The upstairs is designed for soundproofing so that there is no direct wall between the bedroom and the children's room without at least some cabinets in front of it. Think about that carefully.

In my opinion, the cabinets in child 2's room are planned incorrectly – I would pay attention to a custom fit in the niche. Possibly also a corner cabinet, which I would choose beforehand.

Other than that, I find it very good. The "empty space" in the living room is, in my opinion, not wasted here as a central living area. I also would not change the orientation for the reasons you mentioned.

Hello everyone,

thanks for the quick feedback first of all!

Regarding your points:

- we had the window in the changing room included and then removed it again... the thing is, directly opposite would be a neighboring window at the same height and when changing in the dressing room you don’t want to be watched, which would mean that it would always be darkened or have shutters closed -> so we thought it’s better to use the space because my wife needs as much clothes storage space as possible? :D
-> but we will think it over again

- unfortunately, a complete redesign of the ground floor is not an option for us... as I said, we want to take as much as possible of the beautiful north side in the living area and that would affect the entire layout again. But we already discussed that in this variant, thanks for that!

- regarding the upper floor: yes, we are still struggling a bit... last night we discussed a slightly adjusted variant where we would use the niche for a built-in cupboard in the hallway as a small household storage. Then we would have a nice straight cupboard and TV wall in the bedroom, child 1’s room would get bigger and by moving the wall in child 2’s room, the children’s rooms could be balanced out... what do you think about that?

Thanks in advance for further input!